


Gravestone

by HorizonTheTransient



Category: Mage: The Awakening, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, cutting room floor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2020-10-28 12:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorizonTheTransient/pseuds/HorizonTheTransient
Summary: Four perfectly good chapters that I could not for the life of me get to cooperate. No ending, no resolution. Ends on a cliffhanger.The premise is "what if I wrote a fic that was my usual goofy teen bullshit, punctuated by some of the legitimately horrifying things that're more characteristic of Worm?"





	1. Chapter 1

"I wonder who we pissed off to get stuck with the graveyard shift," I muttered.

"Maybe someone just has a sick sense of humor," Dean suggested. "Your name  _ is _ , after all, Gravestone."

"God, CPS would have a  _ field day _ if they heard about this," I said. "Cause, y'know. My power is solid shadows and shit, and my costume is the black robe made of shadows that I summon from thin air.  _ And the PRT makes me patrol at night _ . That's, like. That is  _ exactly _ how you get a kid hit by a car, in the eyes of any responsible and protective adult."

"Of course, in the eyes of a superhero, if you get hit by a car, that's just natural selection at play, and you should probably quit your job."

"Well, sure," I said. "But, like. Look at the fucking motorcycles we're issued. That's not natural selection, that's Russian Roulette."

"Neither of us is riding a motorcycle."

"Well, no, we're smarter than that. You convinced Kid Win to build you a tinkertech horse, and I'm using my shadow magic to hold together my own horse," I said. "Which, incidentally, has produced a  _ lot _ of shipping on the PHO forums."

Dean groaned.

"You're Gallant, the White Knight, and I'm Gravestone, the Black Knight," I continued. "We've got a  _ ton _ of equal-but-opposite themes going on- you pass yourself off as a sort of Tinker, and I'm openly a Magician. It was inevitable, really."

"How much of it is gay dudes seeing themselves in us, and how much of it is just straight women who want to see two teenage boys fuck?"

"No idea, but I'll be sure to post that exact poll on PHO for the general public to vote on," I said with a grin.

"Our break has lasted long enough," he said, shaking his head. "Let's get on the road." He climbed on top of his robot horse, and began to slowly guide it away from the convenience store we'd been loitering outside of, polishing off the soda bottles we'd purchased within.

I climbed on top of my shadow horse, and followed after him. While I could give solidity to shadows, and thus create an actual shadow horse, that was generally very hard, and I preferred to instead just have Kara, a Valkyrie I'd summoned from the Aether and convinced to be my Familiar, carry me.

"So, I know why  _ I _ ride a fake horse," Dean said, once I'd caught up with him. "Why do  _ you _ ride a fake horse?"

"Because I've seen the statistics and heard the horror stories about motorcycles," I said. "Fucked if they're putting me on one of those goddamn things. I'm a registered organ donor, sure, but I was hoping to donate them  _ after _ I got more than two decades of use out of them."

"What, is poor little Gravestone afraid of a little mortal danger?"

"I'm not afraid of death- a death that  _ means _ something, in service of a goal I decided was more important than my life. I  _ am _ , however, afraid of dying in torturous pain in a mangled twist of steel, aluminum, and bones. And usually, because someone  _ else _ made a mistake."

Dean chuckled a little.

"I'd at least like the  _ option _ of my funeral being open-casket," I said.

"Now  _ that _ right there is the real luxury in our line of work," Dean said, shaking his head. "We live fast and die young, but our corpses are rarely pretty."

"How's about a bet: if you live past the age of thirty, I get to write that on your tombstone," I said. "Along with a snarky rejoinder, like, 'said a man who did none of these things.'"

"You're on."

Our headsets started buzzing, and then barked a report- a cape fight was happening down in the Docks, and we were supposed to go and clean up after it.

"Ugh," I groused, once we'd spurred our horses into high gear. "You know what's probably the real reason we got this shift?"

"Why's that?" Dean asked, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.

"Because Armsmaster probably realized that two Wards was enough to cover what's usually  _ his  _ shift, according to the rules, and he wanted to get some extra shut-eye."

"Now that you mention it, I haven't ever had this shift until you joined..."

"Of course, it's midnight on a Sunday. This should be a pretty barren time. Who the fuck is awake on Sunday at midnight, aside from us?"

"Those capes duking it out in the streets, apparently," Dean said.

"Lord. If it's Lung, I'm turning tail and running, just so you know."

"That's current department policy, in fact."

"Wait, hang on, I gotta throw up a shadow over us so he doesn't see us,  _ then _ we turn tail and run."

"Ah, right, of course. So glad we have these details sorted out ahead of time."

"Well, of course. We  _ are _ professionals, after all."

"What about that... weird Valkyrie projection you've got?" Dean asked.

"Kara is an actual Valkyrie," I said. "An Angel of Death, summoned from Heaven."

"I refuse to believe that a black knight with power over shadows is, in fact, capable of summoning actual Angels from Heaven," Dean said. "That is ridiculous."

"Hey, who's the wizard here, you or me?" I asked.

"You're not a wizard at all!"

"When we get back, you've gotta put another quarter in the 'Magic Isn't Real' jar," I said. "It's department policy, Gallant."

"Fuck you."

"I'll do it, but only for the fans."

We rounded a corner, and beheld a street with abnormally good lighting, because a bunch of shit on the streets was on fire. Cast in the dull orange of the flames was the body of a muscular, shirtless man, slicked in spots with blood, and upon more than cursory inspection, clearly missing bits, such as his left leg below the knee, and his left arm right below the shoulder.

"Oh holy shit," I whispered.

"That's... that's Lung, alright," Dean said, quietly, as we slowed our approach. "Dear god, what  _ happened _ to him?"

"I, uh... hey, how about  _ you _ go take a look at him, and I will look at literally anything else," I said. "Look around for who did this, maybe?"

"Hell no, I'm not touching him."

"Hah! Oh, Gallant. I wasn't actually giving you a choice in the matter." I reshaped the shadows into a pair of wings, and gave them a big flap, wordlessly signalling to Kara to lift me up, onto the level of the rooftops. I spotted a person standing on a rooftop, and guided Kara to carry me over to them. "So, what the hell happened here?" I asked loudly, as my intangible guardian angel brought me within earshot of the costumed weirdo. Said weirdo was rail-thin, and had something of an insectile theme going on.

"I, um. Overheard Lung talking about, uh, planning to kill kids, and... I hit him with a bunch of spiders," the weirdo said.

"You ripped his arm off with  _ spiders? _ " I asked.

"N-no, Bitch, or, uh, Hellhound, whatever her name is, she did that with her dogs," the bug-themed weirdo said. "Turns out, um. The kids Lung was going to kill were the Undersiders."

"Ah. Well, still, you did good by stopping him," I said. "The Undersiders are criminals, sure, but they're just thieves. They don't deserve getting killed."

"Thanks. I think."

"He's alive," Dean called from the street below, where he was examining Lung.

"What's the damage?" I called back.

"Lotta little chunks missing."

"I, um. May have used some Brown Recluses on him," the bug person said.

"...Okay, let me present you with a deal, little Aranya," I said.

"Aranya?"

"Spanish for spider. You haven't given me a name to work with, here."

"I... haven't come up with one."

"Fair enough. Anyhow. My partner and I are going to say we didn't see who did this to Lung, and  _ you _ get to keep this off your record.  _ I _ think you did good, but that's because it's not my department to give a shit about what happens to Lung. It is, however,  _ someone's _ department, and they might like a word with you if they find out you did this. And, in the future?"

"Yes?"

"Quit using those kinds of spiders on people you don't intend to kill."

"Sorry."

"Oh, and take this," I said, pulling out a business card with my PRT-issued phone number on it. "Give me a call if something cape-related comes up and you'd like it to be someone else's problem." She carefully took the card, and tucked it into a pocket on her back. "Take care, Aranya. And come up with a name for yourself so I can stop calling you Aranya."

I descended from the rooftop to the street, where Dean was doing his best to stabilize Lung before juicing him up with our standard-issue tranquilizers.

From this distance, I regretted having eyes; I didn't have a particularly strong stomach when it came to gore, and seeing exposed bone alongside all the shit that's supposed to keep the bone  _ un _ exposed wasn't doing much to keep my most recent meal down.

"So, what's your read on the spider girl?" Dean asked, working with cold efficiency to bandage and tourniquet all he could.

"She seemed like a normal girl in a bit over her head," I said. "But, well... looking at the fruits instead of the tree..."

"Looking at the fruits, she's not someone I want mad at me," Dean said.

"Nope. Which is why we're not telling anyone we saw her. Because if she learns that she got the, ahem, 'credit' for this, she might not be too pleased."

"...I'm going to start carrying around a can of bug spray, just in case."

"Smart man."

\---Author's Note---   
I'm gonna be honest, I mostly know the spanish word for spider because of the Sombra/Widowmaker fancomics that popped up all over the place a few years back.


	2. Chapter 2

"Deathspeaker. What is awry?" Kara asked, while I vomited in an alleyway.

"Squeamish," I said, once I was done with my two-liter yawn. Thankfully, it was mostly liquid, and I didn't end up having to pick half-digested gunk out of my teeth. Unfortunately, it was mostly liquid, and burned like hell.

"I do not know that word."

"I get sick from looking at gore."

"...That is a thing?"

"For humans? Yes."

"You okay over there, Gravestone?" Dean asked.

"I think I'm done vomiting, for now," I said. "I can't guarantee I won't be seeing that in my nightmares, but I'm out of things to vomit, now."

"He's not even dead," one of the PRT troopers said. "And you call yourself  _ Gravestone? _ "

"Shadow Stalker was taken," I said flatly, stepping out of the alley.

"Lay off, Greg," another trooper said. "Kid's still in high school."

"Honestly, I don't think the Wards should even be a thing," a third trooper said. "Maybe it's just me being old-fashioned, but I don't much care for the idea of child soldiers."

"What can I say, I'm young and I need the money," I said with a shrug. "Now, if y'all will excuse me, I'm gonna go be somewhere else."

\---

"I'm gonna be honest, the idea of pre-packaged sandwiches is inherently ridiculous to me," I said, as we exited the second convenience store this hour. "I didn't even know they were a thing until last week."

"They're very real," Dean said. "And they probably won't be what kills you young, either."

"Yeesh, you're awful grim tonight," I said, before taking a too-large bite of sandwich.

"I've been at this for a while. People die doing this job, Gravestone. I've seen it happen."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"We were only close in the physical sense; I ended up having to clean the bloodsplatter off my armor with an angle grinder and a flap disk."

"Dude, I'm eating."

"What, just mentioning blood is enough to set you off?"

"No, descriptions don't do much for me," I said, shaking my head. "But I'd like to continue not testing that, and you sounded like you were about to narrate every gory detail."

"Ah, I see. Well, I'll shut up for the time being, let you eat."

He managed exactly fourteen and a half seconds.

"So, do you  _ really _ believe the whole wizard thing?" Dean asked.

"Yes, I do in fact believe that I am a wizard," I said.

" _ Why? _ "

I gestured to the side at Kara the Valkyrie, who materialized so Dean could see her.

"Right, your Valkyrie projection thing," Dean said.

"I am no projection," Kara said. "I am an Angel of Death from the Aether, the Supernal Realm of the Celestial Spheres."

"Also, Dean, most of what I practice is shadow magic," I added. "Look at her and tell me what she looks like."

"...A white woman with black hair and black feathered wings?" Dean said.

"Yeah, I can't make anything white out of shadows," I said flatly. "And- excuse me, can I help you?"

"Are you going to finish that?" Kara asked, trying her best to loom while eyeing my sandwich.

"Yes I am going to finish this," I said. "Fuck off."

"Now, now, that's no way to treat a lady," Dean said. I could  _ hear _ that smug grin in his voice. Asshole.

"Look, I know Kara here  _ looks _ like a woman with wings, but I assure you, she is  _ not _ human," I said. "She's an Angel, and if you're caught up on your scriptural studies, you'll know they behave in strange, alien ways."

"Yes, and I also know inhospitality towards Angels is how you get turned into a pillar of salt. I'll go get another sandwich."

He turned and walked back into the convenience store, and I turned to face Kara, who looked very smug.

"You don't even need to eat," I said.

"And  _ you _ do not need to masturbate, and yet-"

"You are an awful garbage bird and I hate you."

"What have I said about inhospitality to angels?" Dean asked, exiting the convenience store with another pre-packaged sandwich, which he tossed to Kara. She bit the plastic, before frowning. "...Gravestone, help her get that open."

"I can figure it out," Kara murmured, turning it over in her hands, before biting the plastic again and ripping it open. "There, see?"

"Have you been feeding-  _ oh my god! _ "

Kara stuffed the entire sandwich into her mouth and swallowed it whole, like a fucking pelican, or maybe a snake.

"I have made the mistake of feeding Kara exactly once," I said. "You are beholding why, precisely, I no longer do that."

"Good lord, it looks like fetish art you'd find on some furry website!" Dean continued. "It's like a car accident- I can't make myself look away!"

"Oh, you can't look away? Good.  _ See as I see, Gallant. _ " I turned to face Kara. "Return to the Twilight, please; I want to prove a point to him."

She nodded, and faded out of existence, leaving behind a glob of wet, barely-digested sandwich hovering in midair where her stomach was.

Then it stopped hovering, and splattered on the ground.

"That's the real reason why I don't feed her," I said, pointing at it. "Unless she  _ completely digests it _ \- a process that takes  _ hours _ , and she can only manage a few minutes in reality at a time- then she does not take the food with her when she leaves."

"I think... I think I'm going to stop giving you so much shit for being squeamish," Dean said quietly, sounding like he needed some carpet to paint.

"Cool."

"So... you mentioned Twilight."

"I've read the books, but I haven't seen the movies."

"God, I fucking  _ hope  _ that was a joke," Dean said wearily.

"I'm fucking with you but also it's completely true," I said. "However,  _ The _ Twilight, the state of being that Kara is in by default, is a sort of mirror-world to our own, laid  _ on top _ of our own. To our world, things in Twilight are invisible and intangible... until they specifically choose to not be, a process called materialization. Twilight is mainly inhabited by Ghosts and the occasional visiting Spirit from the Shadow,  _ another _ other-world, which is... different. I don't know much about it."

"Is the Twilight where Heaven is?"

"Nope. Heaven, along with Hell, the Underworld, the Fairy Lands, and the Primal Wild, all make up a place called the Supernal Realms, worlds made of pure idea and symbols." Kara re-materialized, and began to eat the sandwich-blob straight off the ground. "This means that beings  _ from _ the Supernal Realms, such as Kara, are... really fucking weird, once they start to intersect with material reality."

"She's eating off the ground."

"Yeah, she does that."

" _ Why? _ "

"Like I said, she's not human. I think one of the symbols making her up is a crow."

"The taste is different, this time," Kara said, once she'd gotten the whole sandwich back inside her mouth.

"Go sit on the trashcan," I said, pointing.

"So, what's your relationship with her, that you get to order her around like that?" Dean asked. "Are the two of you dating and you both happen to be uncomfortably conservative or just kinky?"

"Dean, I just got through lecturing you on how Angels are bizarre aliens who regularly do all sorts of disgusting things simply because human notions of disgust aren't in their symbolic makeup," I said. "What part of that makes you think I'd look at her and think 'yes, I want to try smooching that'?"

"Because she at least  _ resembles _ an attractive human woman and also she does what you tell her to, and you are a horny teenage boy who I am assuming is straight."

"There's just...  _ so _ many reasons why that's a terrible idea," I said. "Chief among them being that  _ she does whatever I tell her to _ . I don't know if it's because she cannot tell me no because of the magic of the Familiar bond, or because it never  _ occurs _ to her to tell me no because of her naivete, but either way, she cannot meaningfully consent, and that produces a  _ very _ uncomfortable situation just being around her, let alone commanding her to aid me in combat and other everyday situations, and she fucking  _ agreed _ to that when I first summoned her, before I bound her as my familiar!"

"I see," Dean said. "Your reasoning makes perfect sense, and, to an extent... I'm kinda glad you've got this kind of moral fiber. We can strengthen your stomach pretty easily. Morality, though, is a bit trickier to teach."

"Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but she's a disgusting birdwoman who eats random shit off the ground and even if there  _ was _ valid and unambiguous consent, I wouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole. Kara, we're leaving. Return to the Twilight."

She disappeared once more, and this time, her sandwich dropped into the trash can instead of on the floor.

"Ah, smart man," Dean said. "Alright, let's go."

\---Author's Note---   
I need to stop watching Russian youtubers. I am  _ still _ so tempted to change that last line to "Davai, let's go." I don't even know what that word means, and neither do these assholes- they both live in New Jersey.


	3. Chapter 3

"So... magic," Dean said.

"Stunning. Riveting. Verily is it three in the  _ fucking _ morning what the  _ fuck _ I want to go home."

"Cranky cause you're sleepy, aren't you?" Dean teased.

"I'll fucking  _ sleepy _ with your  _ mom _ ," I snapped.

"Good luck with that, she's been dead seventeen years," Dean said. "Anyhow, going back to the subject of magic. The trend with self-proclaimed wizards and magicians is that they've got more than one trick up their sleeve- shitty is the wizard who knows but one spell, after all."

"That depends on the spell, but yes," I said. "I've got more than just shadow-magic up my sleeves. See, shadow-magic is just one spell from a school of magic that I've reached a little bit past the halfway point of."

"What school is that?"

"Death magic," I said, grinning under the veil of darkness that concealed my face. "It's apparently very non-traditional for wizards whose power comes from Heaven. However,  _ more _ traditionally, I've got some facility in the schools of Forces and Prime."

"...Elaborate, please?"

"So, Death is the arcana of ghosts and zombies, obviously, but it's  _ also _ the arcana of shadow as a positive force equal and opposite to light, rather than simply being the  _ absence _ of light. Then there's dealing with the Twilight- the state Kara's in, remember? There's  _ also  _ stuff in there about decay and entropy- basically, I can make stuff break just by thinking about it hard enough. Prime is... basically, meta-magic. I don't have enough of it to do anything interesting."

"And Forces? What does Forces do?"

"Oh, y'know. Light, heat, sound, fire, kinetic energy... Big, flashy, obvious stuff. Do you want me to craft for you an authentic Burning Bush? Cause I totally fucking can... once I improve my facility with Prime so I can weave the fire magic into the bush along with the spell that protects it from being consumed by the flames."

"I'd rather we not get struck down by lightning for heresy," Dean said.

"No, no, heresy would be if Vidius- the name of the Death God who taught me magic- if Vidius taught that ghosts were to be treated with respect, but I founded a branch faith that taught that ghosts were to be treated as mindless, disposable tools," I said. "As long as we don't make a religion out of the Burning Bush, it's just blasphemy."

"That's not what heresy is," Dean said. "Blasphemy is just talk- heresy is action."

"No,  _ sacrilege _ is action, heresy is talk that someone wrote down in their holy books," I said. "...Wait, no, this would be sacrilege, not blasphemy. Talking about it might be blasphemy, though. Dunno."

"Eh, I'm Jewish," Dean said with a shrug. "Our conception of God is less 'definitionally always correct' and more 'a very, very powerful man who you are still perfectly capable of arguing with.' I think he'll be understanding of our argument over what a mortal replicating one of his miracles would be classified as."

"The argument itself is still definitely blasphemy, though, right?" I asked.

"Oh, for sure, he just doesn't care. Anyhow, so. You mentioned other Supernal Realms. What's the deal with them?"

"No idea. I only saw Heaven; Vidius told me that wizards only see one of the five Supernal Realms, and only once in their lives. So presumably, a wizard who saw Hell would be pretty different to me, and one who saw the Fairy Lands would be wildly different from both of us. I say  _ presumably _ because I've never actually  _ met _ another wizard. At least, as far as I know."

I glanced around furtively, layering on a few perception spells. Nothing.

"...I was kinda expecting another Wizard to show up," I said.

"Paranoid cause you're sleepy, aren't you?"

"I'll  _ sleepy  _ with your  _ dad, _ " I said.

"Please do not have sex with my father."

"Why not? Who's to say he isn't a silver fox?"

"I am. His hair is still completely black, anyhow. The only silver about him is his cufflinks.  _ Also _ , and I shouldn't have to say this, he's old enough to be your dad and that's  _ fucking creepy as hell _ ." Silence reigned for all of twenty seconds. "Hey, which lunch do you have tomorrow?"

"Do you mean eight hours from now, on Monday, or do you actually mean tomorrow, as in Tuesday?" I asked.

"Shit, right. Uh. Monday."

"C Lunch."

"Okay, cool, me too. Come find me, I'll introduce you to some friends."

\---

"Hang on, I recognize you," I said. "You're the, uh... fuck, I know I recognize you from  _ somewhere _ . Hang on."

"Take your time," Dean's friend, a pretty blonde girl who was almost as tall as I was and quite a bit more muscular, said, as I sat down across the lunch table from her.

"You're... uh... oh! I know! You're the girl who hit me in the face with a basketball back in eighth grade!"

"...well I wasn't expecting  _ that _ ," she said. "Name's Vicky, by the by."

"Look, we all have weird associations," I said with a shrug. "I know you have a sister who's a brunette who hit me in the face with a kickball back in fifth grade. Also, I'm Joe, nice to meet you."

"What is it with you and sports injuries?" Dean asked.

"Dean, he looks like he's one trip to the mall away from being a genuine gothy pretty-boy," Vicky said. "You look at that and tell me you see a burning fire of athleticism."

"I beg your pardon," I said, only mildly offended. She was right, and I didn't exactly have a ton of pride in my athletic prowess or general masculinity.

"You look like if Dean went feral in the woods for a month," Vicky continued. "You look like someone took an average-sized man and then stretched him out to make him longer. You look like if Waluigi entered the witness protection program and got rid of his mustache."

"Yeah and you look like if Rob Liefeld tried to make a snowman, bitch," I countered. "You look like you grew up in a cave that was also a Sephora. You look like your name is Katelyn but spelled inventively wrong."

"This was a mistake," Dean said. "I should've never introduced you two."

"And  _ you _ look like I could find three identical copies of you if I stood up and looked for five minutes," I continued, rounding on Dean.

"You look like a sitcom protagonist from the 1950s who's vocally proud of maintaining his virginity," Vicky added, turning on him as well.

"You look like an anthropomorphic shade of beige."

"You look like if the guy from Archie Comics was less interesting."

"This is bullying," Dean said. "I'm being bullied right now."

"It's a  _ bonding experience _ ," I said.

"I don't feel very close to either of you right now," Dean said.

"Well,  _ I _ feel like I finally have the awful brother I occasionally wondered what it would be like to have," Vicky said.

Dean tilted his head back and groaned as Vicky and I laughed about his misfortune.

"Anyhow, my hobbies, aside from being hilarious, are writing godawful anime fanfiction and researching magical bullshit," I said.

"Magical  _ bullshit? _ " Dean asked. "Not to put too fine a point on it but you yourself are a practicing magician."

"Wait, what," Vicky said. "Dean, why didn't you tell me your friend is a crazy person?"

"Oh, lord, one of these..." I muttered. "Alright, you think magic isn't real?"

"Well. No. It isn't."

"Alright, punk." I lowered my sunglasses, throwing the world into a blurry, over-bright mess. " _ Prove it _ ."

"What? That's-  _ what? _ "

"Prove to me that I am not, in fact, a Wizard, keeping in mind that I have several reliable eyewitnesses and video recordings demonstrating my ability to give shape and solidity to shadows  _ and _ to shoot lightning out of cattle prods. Oh, and also having a fucking Valkyrie following me around and occasionally materializing."

"Okay, I'm calling bullshit, show me the fucking Valkyrie," Vicky said, folding her arms.

" _ See as I see _ ," I said, layering magic over her being. It was a quick and dirty spell, that wouldn't last more than fifteen minutes, but it was enough for her to interact with Kara, who was staring lustily at a carton of chicken nuggets sitting in front of Dean. "This is Kara, an Angel of Death. If you look closely, you'll notice her chalky, corpse-like pallor and her over-sized raven's wings."

"Why'd you make the angel so sexy?" Vicky asked.

"Oh good lord not this again," I muttered.

"It's a valid question!"

"No it isn't! I didn't make Kara in the first place!" I said. "That's just what she looks like!"

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Dean asked.

" _ See as I see _ ," I said, casting an identical spell on Dean.

"...okay, yeah, now that it's not two AM outside a convenience store, I gotta say, Kara is  _ distressingly _ sexy."

"Okay, fine, let's fix that real quick," I said. "Hey Kara, you hungry? Manifest for me, real quick."

\---

"Are you going to eat that?" Kara asked, as Vicky vomited into a trash can, provoking even more vomiting.

"Joe, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think I like your girlfriend," Dean said, visibly green around the gills. "For one thing, that food she just ate? I  _ was _ in fact going to eat that."

"That's what you get for describing the inhuman monstrosity that lives in the Twilight between realities as 'distressingly sexy,'" I said. "Also, if it makes you feel better, she also ate my lunch."

"Also, I am not his girlfriend," Kara said.

"What, you know the word girlfriend but you didn't know squeamish?" I asked.

"Girlfriend is a concept I am familiar with," Kara said with a shrug. "Ravens mate-bond for life. Squeamish, however, is not a concept I know, except through observing humans. You and your people are... strange."

"Will you make her go away if I say I believe in magic?" Vicky asked.

"...I'll try, but no promises," I said. "Kara, sit on top of the trash can before returning to the Twilight, please."

"Is it just me or is it weird how easily she takes to being called an inhuman monstrosity?" Dean asked.

"Humans do not have a monopoly on senses of humor," Kara said, before winking out of existence, depositing the contents of her stomach into the trash can.

"Oh my god it's in my  _ hair! _ " Vicky shrieked.

"Listen, when you think about it my way, this whole mess is actually entirely  _ your _ fault and I didn't do anything wrong at all," I said. "On that note, I need to go be far enough away from you that you cannot practically voice your dissent via kicking my ass. Later, y'all!"

\---Author's Note---   
I'll stop banging the "Kara is actually horrifying and disgusting" drum when it stops being funny.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hello, Aranya," I said, as the costumed bug vigilante sat down across from me. "Please tell me you haven't done anything to make a fool of me in the last day or two."

"...maybe?" Aranya said. "You know the Undersiders?"

"Yes," I said. "What about them?"

The two of us were at a twenty four hour rooftop cafe; Brockton Bay had ample facilities catering to capes, and with the magic of Forces, I was able to fry the listening devices nearby and contain the sound of our conversation in a bubble around us.

"I got invited to join them, and I thought... well, maybe I could go undercover. So I joined them, and now I know their names and where their base is."

I blinked a few times.

"Oh my god," I said quietly. "Okay, good work? But also  _ never _ do that again."

"What? It worked!"

"If it's stupid and it works, it's still stupid, and you're lucky," I said sagely. "Let me ask you this: did you have an escape plan for 'what if they realize what I'm doing and then try to shoot me in the head?'"

"Planted spiders on them," Aranya said.

"...That's  _ something _ , although not  _ nearly _ enough," I said. "In a fight, you need something that hurts now, not something that kills in a few minutes. But... well, you're new to this. Still a lot to learn. You're  _ very _ accomplished for how new you are, I'll give you that. Have you considered joining the Wards?"

"Yeah, but I decided against it," Aranya said, shaking her head. "I do cape stuff to get  _ away _ from teen drama bullshit."

"Well,  _ that _ isn't healthy," I said. "But... whatever. So. Names of the Undersiders?"

"I can't say yet," Aranya said. "They've got a mysterious benefactor. I wanna find out who it is first."

"No," I said.

"...Beg your pardon?"

"No, you may not continue to indulge your spy thriller fantasies," I said. "Quit while you're ahead, Aranya."

"But this is the only lead-"

"Let me ask you this: do any of the Undersiders know who their benefactor is?"

"...Tattletale, I think," Aranya said. "But-"

"We can get her to tell us, one way or another," I said. "You can stop now."

"...This isn't what I came here to ask you," Aranya said.

"Well, no, of course it isn't. You got carried away and jumped a few guns."

"I was  _ going _ to ask if you could pull any strings to keep me out of jail if this whole bank robbery thing went south."

"No."

"But-"

"I don't know if you realize this, but I'm seventeen. My string-pulling ability is severely limited. Look, just write down the names of the Undersiders, and I'll make sure that gets somewhere, but that's all I can promise you. Here. My email." I pulled out another business card, in case she'd lost the first one. "No pressure, just don't commit federal crimes or anything."

\---

"Alright, that's my business for the night concluded," I muttered, riding down the streets on a horse made of shadows. "Let's see about getting home for-"

"Hey Gravestone!" a voice called out behind me,  _ just _ as I turned a corner.

"God fucking damnit," I muttered, turning to face whoever was addressing me.

"I'm Victor; you might've heard of me," a man in a black bulletproof vest and a red shirt said, standing on the edge of a rooftop. "I'm a Mage, myself, and I'd like to hire you to perform a ritual for me. I can promise good money and a clean conscience- not so much as a single subhuman will be harmed in the process. What say you?"

"Blow it out your ass," I said flatly.

"Well. When you're looking back on this, remember that I asked nicely first."

_ "Look out!" _ Kara warned as another man, this one moving too quickly for me to get a bead on, burst out of an alley that was now behind us, and promptly tackled me off the horse, knocking me out of Kara's grasp.

"Let's try this one more time," the man I now recognized as Krieg said as he lifted me off the ground, holding me by the collar of my robes. I realized, belatedly, that he had a godawful German accent.

"Let go of me or I'll kill you," I growled, meaning every word of it.

"I'd like to see you try," he said, grinning.

Wordlessly, I reached out for the nearby powerline with my right hand, tracing in my mind the path between it and Krieg. A sharp magical tug, and suddenly a brilliant arc of lightning shot out of the power lines and into Krieg's forehead, more than likely frying his brain in his skull as it passed through him and into the ground.

The bolt dissipated as quickly as it had arrived, and Krieg dropped like a bag of sand, lightly smoking. That might've killed him.

Couldn't find it in me to feel bad about that.

"Well?" I asked, any concerns of 'well what if I get hurt' or 'what are the permanent consequences of this?' pushed away by the overpowering fact of how pissed off I was. Kara, meanwhile, was channeling her essence to fix up the scrapes and bruises I'd acquired, trying to keep me in the best fighting trim she could with what she had to work with. "Who the  _ fuck _ is next?"

Unfortunately, whoever was next seemed to realize that the lightning came from the power lines, not me, and their next move was to cut those, somehow.

"Me," a man in a tiger mask said as he stepped out of another alley. Stormtiger, I think his name was. He could make blades of compressed air, I think. Something like that. "Oh, and her, too."

I carefully followed his pointing to see Cricket, who was wielding her usual two sickles. In addition, Victor lept from the rooftop, landing on the street with catlike grace, beginning to stalk forward.

"Well, now," I said, rolling my shoulders and discreetly pushing the panic button on the inside of my sleeve; the PRT would send help in short order, hopefully. "This is hardly fair. I mean, there's only  _ three _ of you."

"Well, now, whose fault is  _ that? _ " Stormtiger asked, before bolting into a sprint, another blade of compressed air forming around his right hand.

Kara wasn't just here to carry  _ me _ ; mounted on bandoliers carefully tied around her torso, avoiding her wings, were a variety of useful items that I could, with a spell that Vidius had taken the time to weave into my very soul, pull out of Twilight and into the material world.

Right now, I was pulling out a car battery, and a much weaker bolt of lightning lept out of its terminals and into Stormtiger, who stumbled and fell, but was very much not out of the fight yet.

Unfortunately for me, Cricket and Victor weren't being nice and taking turns. I managed to drop the car battery and withdraw from the Twilight the sawn-off shotgun I'd taken  _ great _ pains to acquire covertly, and got off exactly one shot at Cricket.

The shot went a bit wide, and Cricket managed to dodge right out of the cone of fire. Then she lopped my fucking hand off, and barely a second later, Victor roundhouse kicked me in the kidney, knocking me over and curling me up in pain.

"Get the ether," I heard him say as he knelt on my back and carefully handcuffed my forearms together behind my back. "Jesus, did you  _ have _ to make it harder to tie him up?"

"Gun," I heard someone say in a weird voice, almost like a robot.

"Whatever. Hurry up- there we go."

Then an ether-soaked rag was held over my mouth, and then everything went black.

\---

I awoke to the crack of a whip and a searing pain along my back.

"Wakey wakey, you dumb son of a bitch," Victor said from behind me. I'll give him this much- that whip woke me  _ right _ the fuck up, no grogginess whatsoever. "We reattached your hand, by the way. It'd behoove you to thank us for it."

I was, by the looks of things, shackled to the ceiling and the floor, in the middle of a torch-lit basement or dungeon. I'd been stripped of my robe and the rest of my clothes, leaving me completely naked. And without my glasses, too; looks like I got to improvise a 'let me see properly' spell, finally.

"Let me out of these shackles, and I'll show you the full extent of my gratitude," I said, the murderous rage returning, and only sharpened by the crack of the whip.

"Spare me your bravado," Victor said. "What I want from you is very simple, really. Do you know what a soul stone is?"

"No," I said, continuing to look around, squinting my eyes to try and sharpen my vision. The room was large, with rows of vertical steel bars forming what were, apparently, prison cells. Definitely a dungeon. Scattered around other cells were corpses in varying states of decay, some so rotten that the bones were starting to show. Where the  _ hell _ am I?

"It's a chunk of a Mage's soul, carved off and solidified," Victor explained. "You can use it to produce an area called a demesne, which makes magic easier to perform. The problem with soul stones, of course, is that carving off chunks of your soul is bad for you."

"You going somewhere with this?"

"Why, are  _ you _ going anywhere at  _ all? _ No, I didn't think so. Shut up and listen. I've found a way to make soul stones  _ without _ carving off a chunk of a soul. All it takes is summoning a creature from the Supernal Realms. The only realm I can summon from is Pandemonium- or Hell, as you might call it. So what I want from you is to summon an Angel from Heaven- I  _ know _ you're tied to Heaven, don't try to deny it."

"I've summoned Angels before," I said. "They don't exactly leave behind valuable magical artifacts, you know."

"Well, I'm leaving something out," Victor said with a shrug. "See, when I made my first new and improved soul stone, I called up a Demon from Hell, kicked the shit out of it, and then bound its essence into the physical form of the soul stone. All I need  _ you _ to do is summon up an Angel, and I'll be able to do the same."

"And that would accomplish... what, exactly?"

"More soul stones from a variety of realms means a better demesne," Victor said with a shrug. "A soulstone of Hell  _ only _ enhances Hell's magic; I happen to know a bit of Heaven's magic as well, and I'd like to improve that as well. So... now that you've calmed down and come to your senses, will you do it? We'll turn you loose right afterwards, and never bother you again."

"Suck the farts out of my ass with a straw," I said, before he cracked the whip against my back again.

"Well, brat, I suppose that means I get to hand you over to Krieg," Victor said. "He's very mad about what you did to him, you know. Othala can only heal so much; he'll probably be bearing that nerve damage for the rest of his life. I wonder what torments  _ he _ can concoct for you..."

Victor left, and I heard the door close behind him.

Then the lights went out.


	5. Errata: Smiling Jack

"Well, ain't  _ you _ the spitting image of opulent filth," I muttered, standing in front of a glass case at the museum. Brockton Bay was a port town in New Jersey, but it was  _ also _ a tourist trap, and so the biggest local museum was full of crowd-pleasers like pirate shit and suchlike.

I was in the wing dedicated to pirate shit, but while everyone else crowded around the displays of cannons, coins, and cutlasses, I found myself standing before what was probably the closest thing to a gravestone a specific man would ever get, with a big, visible biography suspended above and behind an enshrined hangman's noose, very clearly the one that had, in fact, killed him.

I could tell because his ghost was there, staring at me.

"Honestly, I'm impressed," I continued. "Oh, sure, I've aspired to your levels of crusty, caked-on dirt, but it's clear I'm beholding a  _ master _ ."

"Are you talking to  _ me? _ " the ghost asked, quietly.

"Well I don't see anyone else around here who looks like they were keelhauled so long they've got barnacles all over," I said, grinning. "This here mockery of a gravestone has the name Smiling Jack on it. You mind if that's what I call you?"

"Go right ahead, kid," Smiling Jack said. "As you might imagine, I'm a little desparate for conversation around here. Not many people can see ghosts when we're not actively forcing ourselves to manifest."

"Not many?"

"Well, one in three hundred years isn't a  _ lot _ ," Jack said, shrugging. He was dressed to the nines in the sorts of fashions you'd see in a Pirates of the Carribean movie, which gave me an idea for later. Like I'd said, he was opulently filthy, tattered silks and tarnished silver, like a true Pirate King. Under the captain's hat, there was enough bare skin showing through the filth that I could tell he was some flavor of North African, most likely Berber. "The other stiffs in here aren't much for conversation, either. So. What do  _ you _ want with me, little shaman?"

"I'm hiring," I said. "How far can you move from your old rope necklace? I'd like to discuss this somewhere a little less out in the open."

"Thirty five fathoms," Smiling Jack said. "Need me to translate for you, landl-"

"I know what a goddamn fathom is, jackass," I said flatly. "You behave yourself, little ghost, or I'll stuff you in a bottle of cheap champagne with a stupid name on the label and throw you in the bay."

Smiling Jack burst out laughing, and I rolled my eyes.

"Come on, let's get down to brass tacks."

\---

Smiling Jack, once we were clear of the main crowd and secluded away in a little rest spot, manifested a bit more obviously, becoming visible to people with eyes, not just myself.

"...How long have you been able to do that," I asked.

"Two hundred seventy years, five months, and two days," Smiling Jack ground out, parking his ass on the bench. It was either a very convincing illusion of a man in a long, flowing overcoat sitting down, or he'd manifested something approximating a physical body. "But hey, who's counting? So, little shaman, I repeat myself: what do you want from Smilin' Jack?"

"As you mighta noticed, I got a few ghosts following me around myself," I said, gesturing to the listless specters that followed me in here. "They are... well, they mostly carry shit around for me in the Twilight, and when I need it, I cast a quick spell to yank it out of Twilight and into the material world."

"What, pray tell, is 'the Twilight?'"

"It's a state of being," I said. "The state of being that ghosts and their belongings are in. You're without a body, just a soul floating along."

"Reach out and touch me, shaman. You'll find I've got body and to spare."

I reached out and poked his arm. Yep, that was solid alright.

"Well, so you do," I said. "Anyhow. Don't call me shaman, I'm not a shaman. Shaman do healing and spirits. You're not a spirit, you're a ghost."

"Oh, this is gonna be good," Smiling Jack said. "What's the difference?"

"Ghosts only happen when people die," I said. "Spirits happen when anything else just exists. There's spirits of foxes, trees, hammers, the bay, and the abstract concept of justice, just to name a few. And they don't live in the Twilight. They live in a different world altogether, called the Shadow. Anyhow. I ain't no shaman. What I am is a  _ necromancer _ ."

"Seems like an awful fine hair to split," Smiling Jack said.

"I can make corpses get up and start walking," I said.

"...Alright, that's significant," Smiling Jack admitted. "Well. Let's get back on track- an old man like me loves to ramble, but I imagine your time is much more limited. What do you want from me?"

"I want to use a spell to reanchor yourself," I said. "Right now, you're tied to that sisal necklace of yours-"

"It's hemp. What's sisal?"

"A kind of fiber rope," I said. "Guess it's after your time. Right now, you're tied to that hangman's noose that killed you. I want to instead tie you to a brass coin I stamped myself, and have you safeguard a young girl who's slated to be kidnapped awful soon."

"And what do I get out of this, necromancer?"

"Name your price," I said.

He stroked his bloodied, dirt-encrusted beard.

"I was very fond of rum," Smiling Jack said. "I can't taste the stuff anymore, though. I've tried- a few people have left it as offerings, over the many years. So, little necromancer, here's my price: at the bottom of the bay lies the wreckage of my ship. You will, somehow, dredge from the seafloor an ancient cask of rum that's as lost and damned as I am. That cask of rum is my price, necromancer."

I sighed.

"And here I was worried this would be  _ easy _ ."


End file.
